Lunch 2.0

Quick note: If you can’t make it down to South Bay for the Lunch 2.0 @ Plaxo, then check out the Lunch 2.0-inspired, SF Lunch .NET 3.X down at Mastrelli’s Delicatessen in the Ferry building, right next to where Microsoft hosted Lunch 2.0 last month

Seattle

Joshua Maher is kicking ass and taking names with the Lunch 2.0’s in Seattle. The next one is at Cardomain

When: Wednesday, September 12th, 11:30AM-1PM
Where: CarDomain Network, Inc., 1633 Westlake Avenue North, Suite 100, Seattle
RSVP upcoming page

Yes, I know it’s filled up already! Don’t be left out again and check out the seattle.lunch20.com, especially thier upcoming events page which is showing two more. One on September 21st and another on October 12th!

Los Angeles

Did I forget to mention that Lunch 2.0 is officially starting up in L.A.? Their first event is going to be at ThisNext on September 7th, right after Burning Man.

When: Friday, September 7th, 12:05PM-
Where: ThisNext, 1409 3rd Street Promenade, Santa Monica
RSVP on Mixergy

There are already 40 people RSVP’d including some very recognizable names. Like Lunch 2.0 elsewhere—it’s a free lunch. So tell all your SoCal friends about it and help Lunch 2.0 LA grow organically…even if we can’t always eat organically.

Also today, hot on the heels of her success at Twiistup 2, Lunch 2.0 L.A. co-organizer, heathervescent, is hosting an her L.A. Geek dinner C & O Cucina in Marina del Rey.

New York City

Brett Petersel has contacted us about getting Lunch 2.0 in the other Silicon *ly: Silicon Alley in New York City. I guess running Web 2.0 Meetup NYC wasn’t enough.

If you’re interested in helping, hosting, or just attending, contact him: info [at] this site and the soon to be launched LunchNYC.com!

Bangalore, India

Speaking of new websites, what’s Oota 2.0?

Bangalore. The Silicon Valley of India.

Rana Singh and Aakash Mandhar inform us that they’ve started a Lunch 2.0 LAN (Lunch Area Network) there, but put a spin on it calling it “Oota 2.0.” I heard it means “lunch” or something in a language other than English. Check out or contact them: rana.singh [at] this site or aakash.mandhar [at] this site, or their blog.

Atlanta

Ben Ramsey, PHP community manager and Atlanta native thinks it’s B.S. that there isn’t one on the south…

answer his question on LinkedIn or contact him: ben [at] this site.

Your area?

The other day I was trying to figure out our Lunch 2.0 mission statement when I happened across one of the first e-mails Mark sent to a couple friends:

Hey Joyce and Adam [of Renkoo], we weren’t kidding about Lunch 2.0. We already bought the domain name. Want to be admins on our community blog? The idea is that we’ll announce where we’re hitting up for lunch and invite people to come along. Then afterwards we’ll post pictures, etc. It’ll be great.

That’s basically our winning formula:

1. Hit some place up for lunch
2. Invite people to come along
3. Afterwards, take pictures, blog about it, etc.

If you meet someone from an area that is starting up a Lunch 2.0 refer them to the people above. Interested in starting one in your area? Contact Mark and me.

Mark was right: “It’ll be great.”

It was… and is… and will be.

If there is one event last year that representing the “tipping point” for Lunch 2.0, it had to be last year’s Web 2.0 Expo at Hitachi Data System. (My personal tipping point was the first time my Lunch 2.0 was paid for. Thank’s Dave! ) The video Holly took of the Hitachi’s blowout never ceases to impress:

Click To Play

This year, they’re taking it in a different direction by inviting all Web 2.0 companies to MIXER 2.0: A meet and greet cocktail night with appetizers and drinks!

Hosts: Hitachi Data Systems and Arcscale
Location: The Blue Chalk Café
Address: 630 Ramona St, Palo Alto, CA, 94301
Date: Thursday July 26, 2007, 6:00-8:00PM
RSVP on SeeUThere (by July 24th)

PodShow and quigo will be special guests there!

It’s hard to believe it’s been less than a year since Jeremiah organized the Hitachi Lunch 2.0. And finally, he’s written down some Lunch 2.0 hosting tips he’s learned from that experience and being a tireless promoter of our events in in this must-read article.

Jeremiah writes:

“The Lunch 2.0 phenomenon is taking off, it’s spread to Seattle, and will spread to other areas in the United States, and then maybe global.…The modern Community Event is like a tupperware party. A genuine host caters and has real conversations in a laid back style, while the brand is gently present during the event…By giving, we were able to get more.”

Community events…we at Lunch 2.0 love the idea, which is why we’ve been big fans of Women 2.0 and Silicon Valley Web Builder (as well as avidly follow bub.blicio.us).

Show that the power of it extends far beyond the lunch by attending Hitachi’s MIXER 2.0.

Edit: Oh, did I forget to mention that all attendants can also pre-register for MIXER 2.0’s raffle for an iPhone? Bah. Who wants that crap anyways? Damn you, Steve Jobs!

Edit: For you event whores, here is the Upcoming link.

As VC of Lunch 2.0, it is my job to make sure we run at a loss until we sell out. With all the free schwag that we’re getting from our gracious hosts, we’re in danger of recouping the $5 investment that I put in for the domain name.

I can’t let that happen and I’ve forced the others to seek a second round of venture financing with a pre-capitalization of… well… to be honest… it sort of breaks down there.

Oh well, I’m trying to increase exposure of Lunch 2.0 because a lot of people hear us through word of mouth and have complained that they don’t know how to get in touch with us to host an event. So I had business cards printed out:

I had an extra deck printed and I’m trying to give away all the cards from it. The way this works is you view them on Flickr, mark the one you want with flickr’s notes feature, and contact me and tell me how I can get the card to you. Pretty easy, huh?

Quick links: one, two, three, four, five.

This is my way of saying thanks for coming out to Lunch 2.0 and thanks for hosting! Without you, we’d just be four guys trying to sneak into cafeterias in the Valley.

Andrew Warner of Mixergy is trying to start up a Los Angeles Lunch 2.0 and is looking for a few co-founders. Contact him or, if you’re near Santa Monica tonight, feel free to join him for a DotCom Happy Hour.

Dot Com Happy Hour hosted by Mixergy
Location: Bodega, Santa Monica
Time: Tuesday, June 5 @ 6:30 PM (today).

Noticed in Computer Weekly that Lunch 2.0 is backlash again:

Tim O’Reilly has a lot to answer for. When the publishing guru coined the term Web 2.0 at a 2004 conference he spawned a generation of marketing puff. We have had Marketing 2.0, PR 2.0, Democracy 2.0, Identity 2.0, Jobs 2.0 and even Lunch 2.0. The numerical suffix has become shorthand for anything new and, more dubiously, groovy.

Score! But Danny forgot to mention: “tasty, funny, and subversive.”

Speaking of which, Josh Maher writes about the Seattle Lunch 2.0 kickoff. Hmm, looks like our buddies to the north are showing us up! Let’s make that up by being at the next Lunch 2.0 at Ning on Thursday, June 14th!

If none of the others are going to blog about this here, I am.

Lunch 2.0 and the LunchedIn event made the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle with an article by Jessica Guynn titled “Lunch 2.0: free food, a side of tech talk Cafeteria crashers now invited guests.” (Paul Chinn also provided a photo on page A14 of a dashingly handsome Lunch 2.0 photographer. I won’t spoil it by telling you who it is. )

Hmm, I got the munchies now.

Upcoming Lunch 2.0s

• Tuesday, May 29- Cellity (Germany)
• Wednesday May 30- Netgear
• Friday, June 1- Wetpaint (Seattle)
• Thursday, June 14- Ning

Want to host a Lunch 2.0? Contact Mark Jen or me.

I forgot to blog about it last time, but LunchGeeks is having their second lunch this Thursday at La Fiesta in Mountain View.

That’s a great time, because you can go to LinkedIn Lunch 2.0 on Wednesday to see where Lunch 2.0 is today and then go to LunchGeeks on Thursday and see where we’ve come from (minus the sneaking into places semi-uninvited).

Don over at SmugMug (who pretty much put Amazon Web Services on the map and really needs to host a Lunch 2.0) created LunchGeeks to “mind meld over some food.”

I like to say that LunchGeeks is more Lunch 2.0 that Lunch 2.0.

RSVP by writing in their comments. You know the drill.

It looks like someone has some endurance! Inspired by when I mentioned that Lunch 2.0 is what you make of it in my super long article, Holly has created a Lunch 2.0 twitter so you can get Lunch 2.0 related tweets. Follow us!

I added the widget to the sidebar on the right and made some page tweaks. Hopefully I can do better this weekend.

As always, we appreciate any feedback.

We might have forgot to mention this but Joseph Smarr has a great writeup of the origins of Lunch 2.0.

If, on the other hand, you think 19th century Russian writers were a bit on the laconic side, then my writeup might be more up your alley.

Enjoy!

In the comments, a diner almost excluded himself because he is “interested in Web 2.0 companies” not “working for one.” Don’t make that mistake! At Lunch 2.0, interest is exactly what we demand.

Here is a Jon Metzler who works in the wireless location business, recounts his Lunch experience:

A quick way to feel somewhat old and certainly very much an old-school wireless location startup employee is to go to a holding of Lunch 2.0. PK, our man about town at Mozilla Corp invited me to join the Web Enlightened for a free lunch at Mozilla Corp, which is walking distance from Google, a short drive from Yahoo, and also adjacent to what is now Google Earth, formerly Keyhole. Sometimes Silicon Valley reminds you of its cheek-to-jowl nature.

At the same table were folks from Zazzle, Yahoo, Cisco, Google.

So if you don’t mind feeling somewhat old, you’re welcome to join in the conversation.